The head of Oguri Tadamasa, beheaded at the riverbed at Mizunuma on the sixth day of the intercalary fourth month of 1868, was carried off by Mukasa Ginnosuke — later Ginsuke — a page of the house of Oguri, and secretly buried at Fumon'in at Ōmiya in Saitama. This story, widely told since the beginning of the Shōwa era and taken up in fiction, is still one of the best-known anecdotes about Oguri's end. Here are its origin, and the examinations made of it afterwards, in order.
Where the story came from
The man who put the story before the world in a settled form was Abe Dōzan, the abbot of Fumon'in. His Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941), after recording Kōzukenosuke's end, goes on thus.
“The head was secretly buried by the attendant one Mukasa Ginsuke in the burial ground of the generations of the house of Oguri at Fumon'in, the family's burial temple.”
The book goes on that Ginsuke escaped the strict watch kept on him, took the head that had been exposed on the bank of the Karasu River, went down to the Kantō, presented himself to the abbot Daiyū of Fumon'in and buried it secretly beside the grave of the founder, Tadamasa. The supporting evidence offered is the register of deaths for the Keiō years in the abbot Daiyū's own hand: it records that a small funeral was held within the temple grounds on the fourteenth day of the fourth month of that year, and beside it, in small characters, are added the names of three attendants beheaded on the same day as Kōzukenosuke. These three names, the book takes it, “appear to have been told to him by Mukasa afterwards”.
The abbot Daiyū is remembered as a man who threw himself into the restoration of Fumon'in after it burned, going as far as Ōshima himself, it is said, to buy a great camphor tree. His patron was Kōzukenosuke, then commissioner of finance. This abbot too was cut down by someone on the thirtieth day of the fifth month of that year, less than two months after Kōzukenosuke's death. His disciples found him in the morning and there was a great commotion. The officers who came to examine the body did so only for form's sake, and he was buried, it is said, just as he was beside Oguri's grave. Neighbours' recollections also survive that it was frightening to see rōnin-like men calling themselves the imperial army loitering about the temple; and this unquiet air was the ground in which the story of the buried head grew.
The head had been sent to Tatebayashi
From the memorial society and from students of Oguri, on the other hand, strong counter-evidence has been produced from early on. The chief point is where the head went.
Matakichi's head, after he was beheaded at Takasaki on the seventh day of the intercalary fourth month, was taken down immediately after being exposed, put into a head-tub and steeped in strong shōchū. It was then sent to the general staff inside Tatebayashi castle, together with the head of his father Kōzukenosuke, beheaded the day before, for identification. Ōtsubo Sadakata and others write: “this too was put at once into a head-chest and sent to Tatebayashi, and father and son alike were produced for the commander's identification, so there is no way Mukasa Ginsuke could have stolen it.” The very premise that it was left exposed on the bank of the Karasu River does not hold.
What, then, did Ginnosuke do? His life spared at Takasaki, given money and released, he rode with a groom to the Nagata house at the village of Magomiya in Kita-Adachi district, where his father Yūzaemon had taken shelter. On the way he called at the gate of Fumon'in and reported his lord's end — this much is taken as certain. For the temple it was the news that the head of a parishioner family they had long known had been beheaded, brought directly by a boy of that house.
The family's testimony does not support the burial story either. Ginsuke lived into the Taishō era and served as headman of the village of Mimuro, but his family agree that he never spoke a word of the head in his life. His son Kyōsuke said: “My father did not speak of it while he lived. It is probably the doing of people with an interest in it.” A man who would weep and talk of the house of Oguri when he had drink in him never brought up this one matter.
When was the head-mound made?
In the grounds of Fumon'in is a mound of natural stone said to be where the head was buried. Shirayanagi Natsuo of Senshū University examined the matter closely in “Notes on Oguri Kōzukenosuke” (Senshū Shōgaku Ronshū, no. 43, March 1987), and concluded as follows.
One, the mound of natural stone was raised in the spring of 1934 by Oguri Sadao.
Two, before that it was a mound of earth, and that earthen mound was itself made between the fifth month of 1932 and the fifth month of 1933.
Three, before that there was nothing there at all.
About the same time Ninagawa Arata contributed the text on the back of the stone for the summoning of his spirit, and Tokugawa Iesato wrote the title on its face. The text says, in effect, that by what is handed down within the temple grounds the head was indeed buried here. A stone raised, men of consequence coming to pray, the papers reporting it — the accumulation of these fixed the story in place.
It should be added that, while Fumon'in is the temple where Matakichi Tadamasa, the restorer of the house of Oguri, is buried, it afterwards came into the holding of the branch house of Oguri Niemon and became that branch's burial temple; the Kansei Chōshū Shokafu states plainly that the burial temple of the main house, Kōzukenosuke's own, was Hozenji at Ushigome Yokoderamachi. The premise of “Fumon'in, the family's burial temple” itself needs care.
The influence reached literature as well. Ibuse Masuji wrote the short story “Fumon'in-san” (1949) on the basis of the Seiden, and it contained both the story of the head-mound and the statement that Fumon'in was the burial temple of the house of Oguri Kōzukenosuke. In June 1978, however, Ibuse visited Gonda, stayed two nights in the village and did his research there; and in “Fumon'in no Oshō-san” (1988), rewritten nearly forty years later, he removed both of those points.
A boy of sixteen survived alone to carry word of his lord's death from place to place — that much can be confirmed. That the anecdote has been told so long is probably because at Gonda and at Ōmiya alike people wished to believe that somebody had at least performed the last service for a lord beheaded with no examination and no hearing.
Sources: Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941; Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki, Oguri Kōzukenosuke, Oguri Kōzukenosuke o Shinobu Kai, 1975; Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family), and Tatsunami, the journal of the memorial society
→ Mukasa Ginsuke — the young man said to have guarded his lord's head ／ Tatebayashi: the night the heads were taken back